One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

This
week on Land of the Lost’s second season, Chaka (Philip Paley)
undergoes a rite of passage or “test of manhood.”

In “The Test,” the Pakuni youngster must steal
one of Big Alice’s eggs at the Lost City, and bring it back to Ta and Sa in the
jungle. The problem occurs, however,
when the egg hatches, and little Junior -- an
Allosaurus -- thinks Holly (Kathy Coleman) is his Mom.

There’s
a lot of running around in this episode, and not much in terms of plot
development. Will (Wesley Eure) and
Holly try to help Chaka any way they can, whether reflecting blind sun-light in
Big Alice’s eyes or helping him roll her over-sized egg into an abandoned
Sleestak temple.

The
big story, perhaps, is the sheer number of special effects and miniatures that
appear here. There are some terrific shots
of Big Alice on the prowl and on the attack, for instance. When Will, Holly and Chaka get the egg safely
into the old temple (a beautiful miniature), Big Alice’s head just right at
them (and us) through the structure’s pillars.
It’s one of the best effects shots so far this season. Also, we’ll see this temple again in a later
episode involving Chaka.

“The
Test” also gives Land of the Lost a memorble new “creature,” the squeaking and
generally adorable baby Allosaur named Junior.

These
are all pluses to this particular episode but -- as we saw in an earlier episode -- there’s an ingrained sense of
sexism on the programs in regards to Holly.
Twice in “The Test,” she is dismissed as being just a “little girl” and
therefore unable to understand rites of passage/manhood.

It’s
an extremely narrow view of sex roles, alas, and a bit insulting too. At the end of the show, Chaka gives Will the
“mark,” of “Big Man Magic” for his help in securing the egg. Yet Holly is just as much a help to him as
Will is during the crisis, and she gets no props or medals whatsoever..

In
terms of James Bond, the big question of the year 1969 was this: Can
the popular film series survive without Sean Connery starring as Agent 007?

Ironically,
in 2012 -- over forty years later --
we all take the answer for granted.

The
film series has endured quite nicely, in fact, with Roger Moore, Timothy
Dalton, Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig each in the lead role. We now understand that the popular character
is bigger than any particular actor’s portrayal of him.

But
in 1969 -- with an Australian model named George Lazenby playing James Bond
for the first and only time in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service -- the
answer seemed far less certain.

That
terrible lack of certainty is actually expressed a bit in the text of the film itself. For starters, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service’s
opening credits feature clips from Dr. No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger,
Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.

And during
one crucial scene involving his resignation from MI6, Bond cleans out his office desk
and looks nostalgically at trinkets including Honey Ryder’s knife belt, Grant’s
watch-garrot, and Bond’s underwater breather from Thunderball.

Then
there’s the moment outside Draco’s office, wherein a janitor whistles the theme
from Goldfinger
(or is it Moon River?).

Finally,
there’s the controversial and valedictory moment in the terrific pre-title sequence during which Bond breaks the fourth wall and quips,
“This never happened to the other fellow…”

In
short, existential uncertainty and diffidence are injected right into the DNA
of On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service.
All these moments veritably scream out to the audience that the James
Bond films boast a history and legacy, and this new film is the next legitimate part
of that history and legacy.

Remembering past adventures.

And remembering them again.

In
retrospect the filmmakers needn’t have bothered with such an orgy of self-justification.
It’s unnecessary because the movie
stands up brilliantly on its own, and also, perhaps, as the most important chapter in the entire James Bond story.

Some
critics of the day clearly viewed it as a vital and vibrant installment too. Writing for The Village Voice, critic Molly
Haskell called On Her Majesty’s Secret Service “the most engaging and exciting James Bond film” and noted that “the action scenes, particularly the ski
chase, winter carnival, and stock car racing episodes are breathtaking.”

Directed
by former second unit director and editor Peter Hunt, this 1969 Bond film
crackles with energy and high-intensity action, and much more importantly,
conveys brilliantly the human tragedy
of James Bond, the tale of a man who finds -- and then abruptly loses -- his true love and soul mate. In some twisted way, the whole affair plays
like a dark, anxious fairy tale.

Clocking
at nearly two-and-a-half hours, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the
kind of rich, nuanced Bond film one can get truly lost in. It takes its time. It doesn't rush. In a sense, it’s almost better to approach this
particular Bond epic on its own, rather than as part of an on-going series
because it diverges so much, and so delightfully, from expectations and
tradition. If one can set aside
expectations and preconceived notions, there are great pleasures to be found here, and great artistry as well.

Buttressed
by a charismatic performance from Diana Rigg as Tracy Draco, highlighting action
scenes that remain “breakneck,
devastating affairs” (per Vincent Canby) and featuring an utterly devastating
finale, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, like the later effort, Licence
to Kill (1989) showcases Bond at his most vulnerable and most human.

“I
hope I can live up to your high standards.”

A
vacationing James Bond (George Lazenby) rescues the beautiful Tracy Draco
(Diana Rigg) when she attempts to commit suicide on a beach. Later the same night, he bails her out again
at a casino when she loses an expensive wager.

Bond’s
protection doesn’t go unnoticed by Tracy’s wealthy father, Draco (Gabriele
Ferzetti), leader of a vast international crime syndicate. He abducts Bond from his hotel, and tells the
agent that he would like the spy to marry Tracy, in an effort to keep her in
line and “dominate” her.

Intrigued
by the offer, Bond agrees, but only on the condition that Draco share with him everything he
knows regarding the location of the missing fugitive from justice, SPECTRE’s Ernst
Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas).

Draco
acquiesces, and Bond and Tracy soon fall deeply, madly in love. At the same time, Bond traces Blofeld’s
location to the Swiss Alps, and to an allergy clinic on an isolated
mountaintop. Disguising himself as an
(effete) expert in heraldry -- Sir
Hillary Bray -- Bond infiltrates the stronghold and learns that Blofeld is
attempting to engineer a pardon for himself by unleashing a deadly,
infertility-spawning virus. He is
brainwashing his patients -- all females -- and during the Christmas holiday
plans to return them to their homes to release the toxin.

Bond
escapes from the clinic, but with Blofeld’s minions in close pursuit, and Tracy
unexpectedly shows up to aid 007. When
she is captured by Blofeld following an avalanche, Bond urges M to act on her
behalf. When M can’t do so, Bond teams with
Draco to launch a devastating helicopter assault on Blofeld’s mountaintop
fortress.

After
Tracy is rescued, Bond and the love of his life are married in a romantic and
beautiful ceremony. There, Bond says his
goodbyes to the secret service, and to Q (Desmond Llewelyn) and Miss Moneypenny
(Lois Maxwell).

But the newlyweds have not heard the last
from Blofeld…

“We
have all the time in the world.”

In
some very perverse and tricky way, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
excels as a Cinderella-type fairy tale, albeit one turned on its head.

The Cinderella figure in the
drama is clearly Tracy, and as in the storied fairy tale, her father, Draco, is a
lonely, heart-broken widower. And in
both the fairy tale and the film version of the story, this widower isn’t able
to provide his daughter the family upbringing she needs. Accordingly, she faces strife and upset in
her life. She seems lost.

Into
this unfortunate dynamic arrives the dashing, outside savior, a Prince
Charming figure. Or in the case of On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service, James Bond, himself.

Although
James routinely romances glamorous women, he soon falls hopelessly in love with
Tracy, realizing that she is his soul-mate and, in a very real sense, a
mirror-image of himself. She is as
physically capable, verbally witty, and sexually carnivorous as he is. In other words…a perfect match.

In
the film’s first scene -- set on a
picturesque beach atdusk -- Bond even stops at one point to retrieve Tracy’s slippers immediately after she
runs away from him and disappears over the horizon. At this point, he is unaware of the true identity
of this princess (or contessa), as is also the case in the fairy tale.

Finally,
before the credits roll, Bond notes that “this
never happened to the other fellow.”

But,
of course, the very same thing happened to Prince Charming.

Now
Bond must find the mysterious woman who has enchanted him and win her heart.

Even
the
Cinderella-like notion of “happily
ever after” is acknowledged and strategically re-parsed in this Bond
film, specifically in the turn of phrase “we
have all the time in the world.”

Both
phrases imply simply, a long future of happiness and shared time. And immediately preceding her death, Tracy
even comments to Bond that the wedding gift he gave her is "afuture.”
“Happily ever after” thus
seems within real reach, not merely the romantic fantasy of some childhood
story.

Sadly,
however, that future is not to be.

Tracy
is killed in the film’s final scene by a vengeful Blofeld. Thus On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is the
Cinderella
story as seen through a cracked mirror, or a cracked windshield as the case
may be; the film's final, haunting image.

The slippers of the princess...

and the Prince Charming who finds them.

The Fairy Tale Wedding.

A Fairy Tale shattered: Unhappily Ever After.

Although
few Bond fans would probably select Cinderella as an inspiration for a
franchise film entry, in this case, the selection proves illuminating because it
lands the primary focus on the female
character. That’s a rarity in
Bond movies, which, of course, usually focus almost solely on Bond’s exploits.

Already
at this point in the Bond series, we had seen a number of great female
characters, from Honey Ryder to Pussy Galore and beyond. But for this movie to work as an emotional, human experience, viewers had to
understand the depth of Bond’s connection to Tracy. And to do that, she had to be established as
something special: a woman above all
others (just as Bond is a man above all others).

In
other words, the film had to answer a critical answer. Why
would Bond choose Tracy? After all
the beautiful and feisty women he has romanced and bedded, what makes this
individual so special that he can’t just walk away, essentially, as he’s clearly
walked away from so many other beauties?

The
movie more than provides answers to that question. First, Tracy is a princess, like Cinderella, but one with problems. Like Bond, Tracy is broken inside. They are both lonely and isolated individuals
living among the “international jet set,” an outwardly glamorous and fast-paced world, but
alienating, apparently, on a personal, individual level. They both seem to have had their fill of
hotels, casinos, aristocrats and empty, shallow assignations. This lifestyle no longer holds allure for either of them, and so Bond finds himself in a profession where death is a constant companion, and Tracy contemplates suicide. Each has made a self-destructive decision, in a way, about their futures.

As
I describe above, the film also great lengths to reveal Tracy’s family heritage. Draco describes how he and her mother fell in
love, and how she died tragically when Tracy was young. We thus come to understand where Tracy comes
from, and again, this is background information we don’t’ necessarily get on
all the other Bond girls.

This
background information arrives (in a beautifully-written and performed scene in Draco's office),
and it adds to our understanding of the Cinderella figure, of Tracy. By telling us of Tracy’s life we start to
understand her journey, and why that journey dovetails with Bond. There is hope for a happy ending, at least for a time.

In
action and deed, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service also reveals Tracy’s penchant
for gambling, her athletic prowess (skiing and horseback riding), and her
verbal aplomb, matching Bond witticism for witticism.

Finally,
Tracy even proves herself eminently capable in physical combat. Importantly, her final
battle with one of Blofeld’s hulking guards is scored to the James Bond, 007 theme. Intriguingly, Bond is virtually a non-presence
in this particular scene. He’s still on
the helicopter, outside, at some distance.
Yet Tracy fights to that well-established, even iconic theme, and the
suggestion is, of course, that she is
worthy of it. That she is a Bond-ian
reflection, and therefore 007’s soul mate.

In
conjunction with the Cinderella-type leitmotif, these character aspects of On
Her in Majesty’s Secret Service make us understand the human and romantic
aspect of the tragedy. I’ve made no
secret of my selection of Tracy (and Rigg) as the greatest Bond Woman in the
film series’ history. Where many Bond
Girls (especially in the 1960s and 1970s) were relatively one-dimensional, Tracy is
not. She is a fully-developed and
intriguing person who seems every bit the equal to Bond.

But
the Cinderella approach to the story helps to remind us of what is at stake
here. It isn’t, actually, the end of the
world, as Blofeld plans it. No, the danger in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service istwo-fold: failing to
recognize true love, and secondly losing that love once it’s been identified
and acknowledged.

“Life’s too short
for 'someday,'”
states the film’s dialogue about falling in love, and so Bond makes the most
dangerous decision of his life (and the film series). He commits himself to the love of
one very special person. There is much
less at stake, for instance, when you don’t really love someone, when it’s just
a fling or casual sex. But by falling in love with
Tracy, Bond puts himself in the terrible and vulnerable position where Blofeld can really,
truly hurt him. For once, James Bond
really knows what it means to love, and to put his heart on the line. And just look at what happens to him.

Once you've known love, the world is not enough. Especially for a Bond.

That
is why, of course, the James Bond story qualifies as tragedy. A man who has hidden from love finally lets it into his life, only to lose it.

Beyond
the twisted Cinderella/fairy tale leitmotif, this Bond film plays uneasily with franchise
traditions. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
is certainly a (dangerous) love story as much as a spectacular adventure, for
instance, and yet that's not the only shift in accent. Additioinally, this Bond film also eschews
the series’ trademark and widely-beloved gadgets. In fact,
the film even goes so far as to mock those gadgets by suggesting that the wave
of the future is not such obsolete trinkets, but things like “radioactive lint.” How
exciting is that possibility?

At
one point -- when Bond deploys a
safe-cracker device -- he just sits back and reads Playboy Magazine while
the machine does the hard work. The
implication, of course, is that such gadgetry (like the mini-copy machine) is
now an accepted part of everyday life, not cutting-edge, life-saving devices. The thrill of technology is gone. Gadgets are just workaday things.

I
suspect that some critics and viewers will always criticize Lazenby’s performance
as James Bond in OHMSS. But facts are facts: he certainly looks good and
moves well. Lazenby is a real presence in the
fight scenes, for example. Perhaps his biggest deficit, performance-wise, is his voice. The Australian accent doesn’t
seem right for Bond, and something about the very cadence or tenor of
Lazenby’s voice is unappealing.I have some support for this opinion, I
hope.My wife watched the film with me
the other night, and said that she liked Lazenby best when he was in the Alpine
Room at Piz Gloria.Of course, in that particular scene he was dubbed by the actor playing Bray, but my wife didn’t know that.She just picked up on a
quality of the vocal performance that worked.

Some
critics have also described Lazenby’s Bond as less self-confident than Connery’s incarnation, and this might also be true. But I would submit this quality works in
regards to the particularities of this story.

I
rather like that Bond isn’t certain that Tracy is love with him (a feeling she
also shares about him). And I like that
when Bond gets lost in the winter carnival -- pursued by Blofeld’s goons -- he appears absolutely terrified. The sense of danger to Bond is palpable in
this film. He’s not the suave,
unflappable guy in a white dinner jacket.
This Bond seems more jittery, more uncomfortable, more ill-at-ease than
Connery, and I feel that if Lazenby had returned to the role for a second
outings, these qualities might have been marshaled to even greater effect. We have seen, today, how Dalton and Craig
excel by playing a human, not superman James Bond, and one gets the feeling
that On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service was designed to provide a vehicle for just
that kind of portrayal. It’s a shame
that Lazenby isn’t quite good enough to carry the picture. And yet, I don’t feel -- as I did some years back -- that he is a huge impediment to the
film’s success, either.

Bond, certain in deed.

Bond, uncertain in life.

Bond, shattered by death.

In
terms of the things one expects from a Bond film, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
is absolutely superb. The fight scenes
are brutal, brilliantly-edited affairs.
The ski and bobsled chases are suspenseful and escalate to sheer mayhem
and exhilaration, marred only by rear projection photography in some
shots. And the stock-car race scene -- so battering and bruising -- is immersing. In the absence of
gadgets, focus here falls on romance and Hunt’s apparent obsession with
man-against-man, fist-against-fist conflicts.
It’s not a bad template for a 1970s Bond, but of course, the series
doubled-down instead on spectacular set pieces, gadgets, and increased humor.

On
Her Majesty’s Secret Service
may just be the most important Bond film ever made, if not the best one. One thing is for certain: the series has by now acknowledged its importance time and time again. This story, and Bond’s marriage to Tracy,
have been mentioned or noted on-screen in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), For
Your Eyes Only (1981), and Licence to Kill (1989).
Interestingly, no other Bond film has been referred to with such
frequency.

And
secondly, it’s hard not to view the re-boot Casino Royale (2006) as an
unofficial remake of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,
since it concerns such plot elements as the love of Bond’s life, the death of
that love, and even Bond’s brief resignation.
Vesper is very…Tracy-like.

Whenever
I watch the film, I find myself dreading the ending, dreading that final,
unforgettable shot of a shattered windshield and by extension, a shattered
Bond. It’s a haunting finale to a great
and generally underrated entry in the Bond catalog. There isn’t one other Bond film that ends on
such a tragic, emotional note, or leaves the audience with a lump in its
collective throat.

I’m
glad that today we “have all the time in
the world” to consider On Her Majesty’s Secret Services’ merits. It deserves a second look.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The main problem that plagued Star Trek: The Next Generation during its first season, as I perceive it, is that the crew of the Enterprise-D appears rather smug and self-satisfied.

In various episodes our heroes rail against patriotism ("Encounter at Farpoint"), eating red meat ("Lonely Among Us"), patriarchy and matriarchy ("Angel One,") and even capitalism ("The Last Outpost," "The Neutral Zone.")

I have absolutely no beef at all with any of that social commentary, or any of those particular ideological stances. I welcome the gadfly approach to exploring issues of the late twentieth century.

Rather, my problem is in how the social commentary is often broached. I realize the humans of The Next Generation are "evolved" ones (and I like that idea too...) but in too many episodes, these 24th century humans lecture, preach and harrumph about how man overcame his age of "barbarism."

There's a looking-down-their-collective noses at races like the Anticans and Selay, or the denizens of "Angel One" that is, frankly, unappealing, and a bit too self-congratulatory.

When this smug vibe is coupled with the fact that the Enterprise is the flagship of the Federation, and therefore technologically superior to almost all comers (including the new enemy, the Ferengi), a real sense of drama and conflict bleeds away from many first season installments of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Everything seems too easy for this team. Specifically, the Enterprise crew often defeats the bad guys without too much difficulty, and usually through extended "talk." Riker convinces an Ancient Guardian, Portal, not to be hostile -- through talk -- in "The Last Outpost." Picard resolves a dilemma with a silicon life form -- again by talk -- in "Home Soil."

Over and over, a spirit of danger and adventure -- a core element of the original Star Trek series -- seems missing from the first season of The Next Generation. Getting through some of these early episodes (like "Haven," or "The Battle," or "Code of Honor," or "The Last Outpost") is really a tough slog.

But I give kudos to the creators and writers of Star Trek: The Next Generation because, by the end of the first season, they were clearly working out the kinks in the less-than-satisfactory format. Episodes such as "Heart of Glory," "Skin of Evil," and "Conspiracy" ramped up the danger level in the stories, and boasted a more unpredictable aura than the first segments.

And if you had to give Star Trek: The Next Generation's second season catalog a name or theme, I would call it, simply, "A Kick inthe Complacency."

That's the term Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) famously coined in the stellar episode "Q-Who," which introduced the cybernetic organisms, the Borg, to the series. Surveying the episodes of the second season, you can detect how a number of the stories explicitly involve pulling the rug out from under the Enterprise crew, and showcasing the fact that outer space may be wondrous...but it's also dangerous and mysterious.

And even more importantly, the Enterprise isn't always the big man on campus. Other forces out there in space may be superior in terms of their understanding of the universe and technological capacities. The upshot of many of these episodes is that the crew's smugness is kicked off rather dramatically. And that's a very good thing for the development of the series, which would hit its stride (and apex) in Season Three.

The "Kick in the Complacency" episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation's second season include "Where Silence Has Lease,"during which the Enterprise explores a black spot in space that seems to twist and defy the principles of physics. Then there's "Elementary Dear Data," wherein Starfleet technology and a slip-of-the-tongue on the part of a fallible human being (Geordi) create a deadly menace for the Enterprise. Similarly, "Unnatural Selection" showcases how Dr. Pulaski's (Diana Muldaur's) hubris nearly gets her killed, vis-a-vis a deadly disease.

The "Kick in the Complacency" segments reach their pinnacle with "Q Who, " which finds the Enterprise outmatched in every conceivable way during that initial encounter with the Borg. But two relatively unpopular episodes are also necessary steps in that journey towards this zenith. These programs are "Time Squared" and "The Royale."

In "Time Squared," the crew is asked to solve a life-and-death riddle that involves "anti-sense," to put it mildly. No easy answers are provided regarding the hows and whys of the story. In this tale, an incarnation of Captain Picard from six hours in the future returns to the present, with a warning of the Enterprise's destruction. The incident is baffling, but Starfleet officers should occasionally be knocked for a loop by a WTF moment in outer space, and that's what "Time Squared" gives a pensive, traumatized Picard.

But for today, I've picked "The Royale" as the tale of this nature I wanted to focus intently upon.

As I mentioned above, it seems everybody hates "The Royale."

Episode writer Tracy Torme hates it. Fans despise it. Critics don't like it either. You may even find it named on lists for the worst ten episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

And yet, I'll be honest, I've always enjoyed "The Royale" given the parameters of the "kick in the complacency" second season. This episode fits that recurring theme well, and more than that, adheres beautifully to the Star Trek tradition of presenting "fish out of water" comedies.

To briefly recap the plot, "The Royale" commences as the Enterprise, on a clue from the Klingons, discovers the debris from a 22nd Century NASA ship in orbit around remote Theta 8. While studying the mystery of Fermat's last theorem, Captain Picard orders Cmdr. Riker to take an away team to the planet surface, where a single structure has been detected in an oxygen-nitrogen envelope (beneath planet-wide ammonia storms).

Riker, Data and Worf soon discover that the structure is a 20th century hotel and casino, the Royale.

Though human in appearance, the beings inhabiting the structure are not authentic life forms. And yet they seem to be marching along on their own bizarre story lines.

Riker, Data and Worf find a clue regarding this mystery in one of the hotel state rooms. They discover the skeletal remains of Colonel Richey, an officer on the destroyed NASA ship.

Richey's diary reveals that aliens interfaced with his vessel and accidentally killed all the Terran crew members save for him. Apparently in payment over their accidental actions, the aliens built Richey a world based on a book -- The Hotel Royale -- they found aboard the NASA ship. Then, they deposited Richey in that world....where he would spend the rest of his days.

They thought they had built him a paradise, but it turned out to be Hell...

Trapped in the Royale, Riker, Data and Worf realize that the key to escape rests in resolving the (bad) novel's major plot points. From the Enterprise, Picard and Troi help out by reading the novel...which proves trying.

After the away team escapes, Riker wonders about the whole incident, and Picard concludes that some mysteries simply have no logical resolution...

The first and most significant thing to understand about "The Royale" is how well the episode fits into Star Trek convention. The franchise boasts a long tradition of bewildered crew members interfacing with other time periods from human history. We see this in programs such as "Tomorrow is Yesterday" and the film, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). The fish-out-of-water humor in such tales allows us to see our confident Starfleet heroes from another perspective; from a perspective of vulnerability. They are truly strangers in a strange land, trying to account for human culture at an earlier stage of development.

What's commendable about "The Royale" (in the same way that "Spectre of the Gun" is kind of cool) is that the writer has not relied on the commonly-seen Trek tropes of either time travel or the "holodeck adventure" to vet this particular fish-out-of-water story. Instead, Torme (Keith Mills on screen) wraps the human adventure inside an alien-based mystery.

In specific terms, "The Royale" finds humor in Worf and Data's responses to the hotel/casino staff and clientele. Already out of place among 24th century humans, the Klingon and Soong android are even more baffled (and in Worf's case, irritated...) by human behavior inside the strange structure. The future depicted in Star Trek is not a hedonistic one (usually, save for Risa...), but this casino is a den of hedonism. Here, humanity is at his worst: avaricious, thieving, gluttonous. It's a strong contrast to the Utopian world we see on the Enterprise.

Some good character humor also emerges from Picard, aboard the Enterprise. This is the guy who is, for lack of a better word, a dedicated scholar. The good captain knows Shakespeare backwards and forwards (as "Hide and Q" demonstrates), and considers James Joyce light reading ("Captain's Holiday.") Here he's forced to dive into a bad dime-store novel, and it's clear he's impatient with the process...and the subject material.

But in addition to "The Royale's" sense of humor (which involves Worf using a 20th century telephone and Data playing blackjack), the episode works admirably as a kind of spine-tingling mystery.

"In our arrogance, we feel we're so advanced," Picard notes early in the episode, and that's the "theorem" of "The Royale." The crew encounters an alien "shrine" that seems to make no sense because it is based entirely on a limited, alien understanding of our culture.

This is one strange corner of the universe, both a little funny, a little scary and a little sad. And it suggests nicely that not all "first contacts" go smoothly, or as expected.

I also appreciate the idea portrayed here, and carried over from "A Piece of the Action" on the Original Series, that no one book should be used as a model for an entire culture; that no single tome should be taken literally as the guide to life.

And yes, I absolutely view this as a pointed commentary and critique of people who interpret The Bible (or any religious book) literally. Meaning that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and Jesus rode dinosaurs around the streets of the Roman Empire. In ways "subtle and gross," to quote Q, "The Royale" reminds us that no one book explains the mystery or wonder of human nature. Humanity is more complex than any one vision contained between two covers.

In that light, "The Royale" is one of the few Star Trek episodes that can be legitimately called surreal or absurdist. Here, you have the unexpected juxtapositions one expects of the surreal (a 20th century casino on an inhospitable planet, a revolving door in the middle of a black void, etc.), but more than that, a meditation on the human tendency to seek the meaning of life in a situation wherein such a conclusion is unknowable.

In "The Royale," a terrible, dime-store book becomes the basis for alien contact and the continuance of human life, but the book itself is a collection of conventions and cliches. How could anyone think life is really like a bad crime novel? Well, if you're an alien...you wouldn't pick up those nuances, I suppose. Cliches are cliches because we encounter them so often. Presumably, aliens would not recognize them as such because they've never read a book from Earth.

I also appreciate the episode's conceit that the aliens tried to inject some meaning into their accidental actions, but by doing so robbed Richey's remaining days of meaning and thus only compounded their error. It's a pretty deft formulation, I submit.

Why didn't Star Trek tread more often into the surreal? Well, that's the rub, and part of the reason that I suspect "The Royale" is disliked by many fans. Famously, Star Trek is about mankind mastering his destiny, discovering the meaning of life, conquering technology, medicine and space itself. Surrealism could be interpreted as an opposite philosophy. Absurdism suggests say that no such domination of existence is possible, because life is inherently meaningless. Magic in Star Trek is merely technology we don't understand yet, a point of development we have not yet reached, but the underlying message is that we WILL get there, one day. If the universe is surreal in nature, then this is not the case at all.

Ironically, Star Trek: The Next Generation is at its dramatic best when the paradise of the UFP is challenged, when there is an acknowledgment that the human equation has not been solved, and when the status quo is up-ended. The "Kick in the Complacency" episodes remember that the human adventure is merely "beginning" and not yet settled. Stories like "The Royale" are indeed about the human adventure just beginning; about the starting point of self-knowledge not the ending point. It's my bias, but I tend to prefer that point of attack in terms of sci-fi drama.

There was a great Twilight Zone episode entitled "Elegy," about astronauts encountering a planet of apparently frozen humanoids, carefully posed (by someone) in the midst of their daily routines. The planet turned out to be not a wax museum, nor a moment of frozen time. Instead, the humans were all dead and stuffed by a kind of galactic funeral director/taxidermist. In some sense, "The Royale" captures the same absurd vibe as that episode. It features a world that shouldn't be threatening...but is. And that threat exists because aliens are not always understandable.

Some mysteries just can't be solved, as Captain Picard reminds us in "The Royale."

I believe that in "Kick in the Complacency" episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation such as "The Royale," the series began to restore the necessary danger to the enterprise (ahem) of space travel. A core component of drama involves the notion that our heroes always must be endangered. They can't always possess the upper hand, or the most powerful phaser banks. Real drama is wrought from facing an enemy who is more powerful, or who holds all the cards, to use a "Royale"-based metaphor.

In the final analysis, "The Royale" is spiky and weird and funny, and a bit disturbing, and it reminds the audience that human beings -- no matter how advanced or evolved -- can't always see and understand the mysteries of the infinite.

No, "The Royale" certainly isn't one of the twenty-five greatest Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, but it fits in well with the second season's overall milieu. It's good for a re-watch on these terms especially in conjunction with "Time Squared and "Q-Who." That's the great thing about Star Trek existing as a long-lived TV series rather than a movie series. There's time to visit these strange, oddball corners of the universe, and no need to tell a "huge" story about universal Armageddon every week.

"The Royale" may be off-message, a narrative detour of sorts. But it's one worth taking, at least every now and again, especially when you a need a kick in your own complacency.

As a kid, the one toy that I really, really wanted (besides a Moonbase Alpha for Space:1999 action figures...) was an relatively authentic recreation of the starship Enterprise bridge. Back in the 1970s, Mego had created the widely-remember "action playset" of the original U.S.S. Enterprise bridge (replete with "Spin Action Transporter") but the detailing of the bridge was far from accurate.

In 1979, Mego made a second attempt, creating a toy of the Enterprise bridge from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. It was somewhat more accurate than its predecessor, and yet manufactured from this horribly light plastic. Worse, all the controls were simply decals that easily came off, or might be applied crookedly.

But finally, in 1993, Playmates created the Star Trek bridge playset that kids like me had long dreamed of. Unfortunately, by then, I was an adult.

Regardless, Playmates offered this "super" play-set of the NCC-1701-D bridge. This huge toy -- the "control center of the starship Enterprise" -- was, by far and away the most accurate representation yet of any Star Trek bridge.

And gosh darn it, it wasn't for Kirk's era.

Still, I wasted no time purchasing this toy to go along with my ever-increasing collection of Playmates figures.

As you can see from the photos, this bridge toy is an "authentic reproduction" of the set featured on Star Trek: The Next Generation for seven seasons. It features a light-up view screen that reveals a Romulan War Bird in close proximity, plus "swivel" panels and "pivoting" chairs for the crew. There are even "pull-out" seats for the "aft workstations." Another nice feature was that that this toy came with "Technical Blueprints" of the bridge, which was nice for -- ahem -- collectors.

This bridge playset deviates from the TV show only in the features added to Worf's security station. Here, an array of push-buttons have been added to recreate sounds from the program. These sounds include "hailing frequencies," "red alert," "tractor beam," "warp drive," "photon torpedoes" and "computer." I always suspected Worf could run the whole ship himself, but here was the evidence. All the other stations were...superfluous.

I was twenty-one when this toy was released in 1993, and thus could not spend days on end playing with it, as I would have liked. In fact, my girlfriend (now wife..) and I had moved into our first apartment together in 1993 while she finished college and I tried to bring home the bacon.

Despite such responsibilities, I did play hookey from my job at the Supreme Court of Virginia for one day, and set up the bridge for action.

"... death is that state in which one only exists in the memory of others; which is why it is not an end..."

- Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) in "Skin of Evil."

In this post, I remember the controversial first season effort "Skin of Evil" written by Joseph Stefano and directed by Joseph Scanlon. It's an episode that has been widely termed an "unmitigated disaster."

In fact, "Skin of Evil" is often considered one of the series' worst installments. That's an honor I would more readily reserve for early first season programs such as "Code of Honor," "The Last Outpost," "Haven," Too Short A Season," "Home Soil," or the second season clips show "Shades of Gray."

The reasons for the generally low-opinion of "Skin of Evil" are clear and definitely understandable.

First, the episode kills off a popular regular character, Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) and more than that, does so in a purposefully random or "meaningless" fashion.

In short, the beloved Enterprise security chief dies the ignominious death of a red shirt.

Star Trek: The Next Generation itself attempted to un-write this apparently unworthy demise in the excellent third season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," by granting the character a more noble and meaningful second send-off.

Beyond this character exit, there are certainly other grounds by which to deride "Skin of Evil" too, if that's the game. For example, the episode relies heavily on repeat footage of the central threat, the oil-slick monster, Armus. One shot of him rising from the muck is repeated three times in less than an hour.

Seemingly routine scenes are not staged very well, either. To wit, Deanna Troi is trapped in a shuttle craft for the duration of the episode with an injured pilot named Ben. We never even see Ben until the last act, wherein Picard beams into the shuttle, checks him out, and concludes he is very weak indeed. Why wasn't Deanna tending to him herself before this moment? She may be injured, but is she physically paralyzed? Why don't we see her limp over to the poor guy (he's two feet away, at most, for goodness sake...) and just check for a pulse?

In another scene -- right after Armus takes Commander Riker -- we get a blooper. We see Geordi's phaser "plop" into the black muck, visible to the naked eye. Again, this moment is indicative of the fact that the episode -- and the physical creation of the alien Armus -- was likely a nightmare to vet.

Also, it's difficult to deny that at least a few lines of dialogue are real groaners. The holographic Tasha's comment during her funeral that Deanna taught her she could be "feminine without losing anything" was horribly antiquated-sounding even back in 1988.

Would that really be a concern of a Starfleet officer in the 24th century? I don't think people even worry about this in 2011, let alone 2311, or whatever.

Finally, an early scene in the episode that features Tasha discussing an upcoming martial arts competition with Worf is so sentimentally scored and so overplayed by the actors that it telegraphs immediately what is bound to happen next: Tasha's untimely death. A little more subtlety would have been nice here, rather than a neon sign which seems to shout out "SHE'S GOING TO DIE!"

Yet -- going out on a limb -- I have always really enjoyed and appreciated "Skin of Evil" for the things it gets right rather than the things it gets wrong. Therefore, I'm going to focus on those positive elements in this review, having already at least paid lip-service to the admittedly-numerous complaints Trekkers might have regarding this segment.

First, a re-cap.

As the Enterprise is en route to rendezvous with shuttle craft 13 and Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis), something goes terribly wrong. The shuttle crashes on apparently uninhabited Vagra 2 and both Troi and her pilot, Ben, are injured. A force field seems to be blocking the Enterprise from beaming up the injured.

When an away team consisting of Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden), Lt. Data (Brent Spiner) and Tasha Yar beams down to attempt a rescue, it is deliberately blocked by a sentient oil slick, a sadistic and hostile creature called "Armus."

When Tasha attempts to circumvent Armus to rescue the wounded, the creature strikes her down in an instant; murdering her. The away team returns to the Enterprise immediately, but there's nothing Dr. Crusher can do to help save the fallen security chief. Though now in mourning, the crew turns its attention towards rescuing the downed shuttle crew.

Counselor Troi, meanwhile, uses her gifts and talents as an empath and psychologist to learn the truth about Armus and his motives. She learns that his world was once home to a race of "Titans." In order to become beautiful, these aliens cast off their darkest, most evil qualities and created Armus...literally a skin (or shroud) of evil.

Once free of him, these aliens abandoned Armus on the desolate planet and headed off to the stars to meet their great destiny. Alone and miserable, Armus now wishes only to strike out and hurt those who rejected him. Troi determines he is "empty," and worse, wants to fill that emptiness with acts of pure malevolence and sadism.

Ultimately, Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) is able to defeat Armus by reminding him that although the creature may boast the capacity to control and hurt the crew, only Picard possesses the ability to command them. After the final confrontation, the shuttle crew is rescued, Armus is abandoned, and aboard the Enterprise,the bridge crew attends Tasha's funeral, an event meant to "celebrate" her life.

One of the reasons I admire "Skin of Evil" so much is that -- up to this point in Next Generation history, at least -- the series was kind of...well, soft.

Although I love and respect the Star Trek ideal of peacefully broaching contact with alien life forms, the very heart of good drama remains conflict. In Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season, the Enterprise crew had already met aliens who wanted to debate philosophy (Portal, in "The Last Outpost"), or worked matters out peaceably with other races ("Home Soil," "Encounter at Farpoint.") Some episodes even featured no overt "alien" conflict at all, but played merely as standard soap operas set in an idealistic future ("Coming of Age.") The show felt perilously like a space adventure without the adventure.

This "safe" approach changed radically with "Skin of Evil" as the crew encountered an absolutely implacable foe. Armus could not be reasoned with or negotiated with. You could not appease him by "asking" what he wanted and then "mediating" a way to give it to him. On the contrary, he was a creature (like so many similar ones we find in the U.S. Congress today...) who existed only to oppose, only to obstruct, only to negate.

If he was not pure evil, then certainly Armus was hostility and id personified. On a program that so often pitched soft ball alien interaction, Armus -- the piece's villain -- really played hard ball. He was dangerous and capricious, and explicitly did not share the Starfleet belief that "all creatures have a right to exist."

Killing Tasha as he did was brutal, nasty and unmotivated, but the unnecessary and savage act reminds our stalwart crew that not everyone in the galaxy thinks in the same way as they do. And this fact, I submit, brings out the steel in their spines, and makes the characters actually reconsider and re-evaluate their noble beliefs.

In particular, I love the moment in the episode wherein Armus asks Dr. Crusher if she is "scared" and she admits that she is, but doesn't back down. That's a wonderfully human character touch, and McFadden is magnificent in that moment.

Another great character moment sees Data refusing to help Armus taunt Geordi, and then conclude that Armus should be destroyed. Armus scoffs at this "moral judgment" from a machine, but the matter is of great import.

By killing Tasha and mocking Geordi, Armus has made Data reconsider Starfleet's core belief, that all creatures have the right to exist. Again, this is a pretty powerful moment for Data and for the show. A big complaint about Star Trek: The Next Generation is that the characters can afford to be magnanimous and noble because they live in a utopia, one where they are the most powerful folks on the block. In this case, however, Data is not insulated by the paradise of the UFP, and must put those morals to the test in practice.

In a flash -- when his friends are hurt -- he abandons noble principle for expression of blood-thirsty vengeance, actually advocating murder. An interesting shade of gray for the child-like android, no? A very human (and understandable) response...

I also believe Riker is developed well here. Worrying for Deanna's safety, he allows himself to be absorbed by Armus. Will goes from shouting to Data for help as he is dragged across the dirt to actively forbidding help and facing intense personal danger. This selfless decision speaks volumes about his character, and how he applies his own sense of morality to conflict.

This is also likely one of Troi's strongest episodes in the first season, and perhaps the series in totality. Instead of offering up blatantly obvious information about alien commanders such as the tiresome bromide "he's hiding something," she sharpens her psychological skills in "Skin of Evil" and really dissects -- effectively too -- Armus's mental weaknesses.

The series should have permitted the character to do more of that kind of thing; to counsel not just in treacly, touchy-feely terms, but in pointed strategic ones as well. A counselor to a captain on a star ship would need to demonstrate his or her practical value in times of danger, and not merely belabor off-point opinions about how the crew is coping with stress ("they're anxious" or "they're inexperienced.") Kirk had Spock to (logically) analyze situations and tactics on the bridge, and one can see from "Skin of Evil" how Troi might have served the same useful purpose if the writers had not been so blindly committed to featuring her in the tiresome "caregiver" mold.

Another quality I appreciate in "Skin of Evil" is the absence of techno-babble. Over the years, The Next Generation descended into a mind-numbing morass of meaningless science fiction jargon. Any alien, any phenomenon -- anything at all -- could be justified, explained, and ultimately defeated by the mealy-mouthed, nonsensical tech-talk.

"Skin of Evil" sidesteps this dramatic plague and writer's crutch, and instead forges a chilling sense of mystery about Armus.

As Data reports, the alien has "no proteins known to us, no circulatory system, no musculature, and no skeletal framework." And yet...it lives.

Star Trek is supposed to be about the countenancing of alien life forms, and Armus, at the very least, is not the routinely-seen bumpy-headed humanoid. There's a real sense of alien menace -- and difference -- about this being. In short, the crew really deals with something unknown and horrifying here, and I appreciate that dedicated sense of ambition, that imagination to go beyond the conventional.

And "Skin of Evil" works overtime to terrify. There are some great compositions of Riker's tortured visage, subsumed inside Armus, and terrifying views of the alien rising from the black bile, looming over the crewmen in the screen frame and appearing truly illimitable. Perhaps we do see some of these shots one too many times, but again, I appreciate the risk-tasking that's on display here, the concerted effort to show us something we had not seen before.

In terms of style, I can also admire how the camera-work goes hand-held once Crusher reaches sickbay with Tasha, and attempts to revive the fallen officer. The immediacy-provoking, jerky camera-work is much different from the program's typically formal approach to visualization, and it lets us know -- viscerally -- what's at stake. The scene's final punctuation, Picard's disbelief that Tasha is "gone," thus proves gut-wrenching.

In fact, Picard gets a pretty good makeover in this episode. He brilliantly outmaneuvers Armus and brings his people home safe, without firing a single phaser shot. But his talking here is not for consensus-building or to convince an enemy of his peaceful ways. Rather, Picard uses words to weaken Armus, to trick and deceive him, and that's a nice twist on the perpetually action-less hero.

I also appreciate the fact that Picard doesn't lecture Data about mortality at episode's conclusion. Instead, Picard is magnificently terse. Data asks Picard if by thinking of himself and his own feelings he has missed the point of Yar's memorial. Picard replies, "No Data, you got it," and the episode ends. It's a sharp comeback that makes the episode's point without explanation or excessive spoon-feeding.

I suppose there's ample reason to dislike this episode because it dispatches Tasha the way it does. And yet, I suspect that the decision to kill the under-utilized character in such fashion was a brave and worthwhile one.

God knows, we don't all get to end our lives the way we wish, and exploring the stars is exceedingly dangerous business. On top of that, Tasha selected a dangerous specialty.

Accordingly, Yar's death may be the most realistic character death in Star Trek history. And that's an important distinction. We're not immortal supermen, even in the 24th century. We're humans...and we die, sometimes unexpectedly. Tasha's death reminds the audience of its own mortality, and again, that's a good thing, a bold move in a show that too often played things safe. I appreciate the moment in the episode when the away team reports Tasha's death, and we see Worf's reaction, just for a few seconds. He doesn't say a word; he doesn't over-emote. He just silently gives this look...and it speaks volumes of his emotional state. Another nice character touch.

I still remember watching "Skin of Evil" for the first time in 1988, and being pretty impressed by it. The episode is thrilling, dangerous and emotional...and anything but soft. I suppose these qualities render it out of step with other installments, but for me, that's all to the good too.

You see, a problem I discern too often in Star Trek: The Next Generation, even twenty-five years later, is that the characters are too comfortable. They possess too many resources with which to meet the unknown, and too much discipline in controlling their fear and anxieties.

Medicine and technology can bring back the dead and dying ("Shades of Gray," "Lonely Among Us," "Unnatural Selection"). All life forms can be reasoned with ("Home Soil," "Encounter at Farpoint," "The Neutral Zone" etc.) and our unchained technology makes life a virtual paradise, a world of material wealth and plenty.

For all of its flaws in terms of execution, "Skin of Evil" proves a dramatic reminder that there are some dark corners of outer space where reason can't save the day, where logic doesn't hold sway, where medicine can't bring back the lost, and technology can't give Starfleet an easy win. A later episode "Q Who," gave the series a similar "kick" in its complacency with the introduction of the Borg, but "Skin of Evil" -- regardless of all its bloopers anddrawbacks -- aimed the show in that very direction too, and courageously so.

In my opinion, it's still a pretty worthwhile and imaginative course correction.

About John

award-winning author of 27 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).

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